It’s been a while since our last blog. We have been incredibly busy at Lewis Lawn Care and Masonry. We moved into our new office space in October this year at 557 4th Street in Troy. We have been putting a lot of effort in transforming it from an old police station to our office space and yard. Patty has joined our team as the Administrative Assistant. She has been pumping out the mowing contracts and we are ready and geared up for the mowing season. The last thing on our to-do list at the office is getting our new yard set up for the season. That is where the focus of this blog comes in.
Our plan is to repave our yard and fix the entrance – currently, the yard is a mix of dirt (oftentimes mud) and broken concrete. This also includes fixing the retaining wall, ripping up the blacktop and repave. Our contractor is set up to excavate the blacktop that currently exists (it is not pitched correctly and would create a surface where water would be trapped for the layers above). We use KC Construction out of Green Island for this type of work and other heavy machinery solutions. We have been working together for a decade or so.
The next problem to solve was getting asphalt bids and build the retaining wall. We got two bids so far and are waiting on the third. Both bids are from companies we know through the volunteering world – Cooper Paving and Smith’s Paving & Sealcoating.
To get started, the first step was to excavate the retaining wall to get the grade correct on our hill entrance. Last Thursday, we demoed the existing wall and tore it down. Since Polly was forecasted to be all rain and 37 degrees overnight, we weren’t too concerned with our entrance being blocked by some dirt overnight. We could still sneak the truck by, but it was tighter with the dirt pile in the way.
We were surprised to see the snow accumulate overnight. We had all our trucks moved to another location (plows on and ready). We kept checking overnight to see how much snow was coming. It became obvious that it was not going to be a rain event and was in fact, a snow storm. The back yard at the office became an afterthought to fighting winter storm Polly. In the end, Polly dumped about a foot of snow on us and man, was it heavy. Our backs are still hurting from it! Also since the temperatures were so high the days before, the ground was incredibly soft. As a result of this, we have a couple accounts where we have to return to fix their grass and grade out some tire tracks and plow marks.
As this is being typed, we are preparing for winter storm Quinn. Another 9-14 inches they are saying. We are at 50.8 inches in Albany this year. Our typical seasonal average is 60.2 inches. Quinn should get us to our average.
On Tuesday, we were able to finish our wall and regrade for now. We still have to wait for Polly’s snow to melt in our yard before KC Construction can come in and rip up the yard. Now we will have to wait for Quinn as well. We plan to be out most of Wednesday and all day Thursday. In our typical fashion, we don’t go home until all of our 110 accounts are done. The concrete will have to wait longer. Thank goodness Country True Value on Rt.4 still has shovels and shear pins in stock. Polly did a number on our snowblowers and we had to replace many shovels. Here comes Quinn!
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